The best word to describe today is long, however, it was a ton of fun. This morning Emily and I woke up in a hotel called Zum Dom and were shortly greeted by our mentors, Greta and Helene. We carried our excessively heavy luggage (in the freezing cold) to a bus that took us to our accommodation here in Graz. I have to say that is quite relieving to be moved in and settled. Things don't seem as crazy as the past couple of days and I don't have to feel like my arms are falling off from carrying my bags. So that's a plus. Also, my view from my room is absolutely breath taking. Well, really everything here is breath taking. After taking our bags to our rooms we went and signed our housing contracts. We proceeded to shop for the things I left back in the States, like towels, a laundry basket, laundry detergent, etc. Then Emily and I decided to go the Main Square by ourselves. We did not quite make it there on the account that we got a little lost. We got on a bus that went the opposite direction of the Main Square and ended up on the edge of Graz. After waiting a while and looking a tons of bus routes we ended up making it back to where we started. We had many failed attempts to find restaurants that we wanted to eat at, so Emily went back to Neubaugasse (where we live) and I went to the Main Square. I went to all the shops and looked at everything and even spoke a little German with the natives. I went back to Neubaugasse and then met up with Emily and Helene and went to the Office Pub. There is a thing every Wednesday night for exchange students at the Pub called stammtisch, which means a routine get together pretty much. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of people. There were a lot of American's but I mostly met Europeans. I laughed a lot and had my cheeks showered with kisses. I would say it was a very good night. Oh yeah, and by the way, my mentor, Greta is seriously the best. I don't know what I would do without her. She takes care of me and she also is so much fun to be around. She has such a great personality and a big heart. I am so thankful to have met her and say that I know her.
On a side note, here are some things that I noticed that are different than what I'm used to seeing in the U.S.:
-Women over the age of 17 wear little to no make up and their skin is flawless.
-Everyone dresses nice. Most men I see are wearing dress shoes, and women look very put together, lots of heels.
-I have yet to see someone who is large in body mass. They are all slim and fit. It must be all that running they do to make it on the tram/bus on time. They also think Subway is really really greasy and gross... so yeah.
Sorry this is kind of a boring blog. It's 1 a.m. here, so I think I'm entitled to tell a boring story, and also I did not have time to take many pictures so sorry! More to come!
Tschüss!!
:-)
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